We may fairly assume that Mr. Willson's answer to the question, What to teach? is in some good degree embodied in his elaborate series of 'School and Family Readers,' of which the first six of the eight contemplated volumes have already appeared. These Readers aim to replace in a good degree the more purely literary materials of most of their predecessors, with a somewhat systematic and complete view of the more generally useful branches of human knowledge. They begin, where the child is sure to be interested, with studies of animals, illustrated with good and often spirited drawings, and proceed through Physiology, Botany, Architecture, Physical Geography, Chemistry, etc., up at last, as is promised, to Mental and Moral Philosophy, Natural Theology, Rhetoric, Criticism, Logic, the Fine Arts, including that one of those arts, as we presume we may class it, with which pupils of the rural schools will have best cause to become acquainted, namely, Gardening! Readers on this plan have long been known in the schools of Prussia and Holland, and are even lately well received in England, in the form of Mr. Constable's popular series; though apparently, when finished, the American series will be more full and complete in topics and treatment of them than any preceding one. Of course, restricted space, and the range of maturity of talents addressed, compel the presentation in simplified form of scarcely more than 'a little learning' under the several heads; and the compiler sensibly tells us his aim is not to give a full exposition of any theme, but rather, 'to present a pleasing introduction to science.' We may grant, in the outset, that most pupils will really comprehend, in and through the reading of it, but a modicum of all the high and large fields of knowledge here intimated to them; but who that can now look on his school-days as in the past, does not remember how many grandiose sentences he was then called on to utter in cadence duly swelling or pathetic, but of the meaning of which he had not the most distant approach to a true comprehension? It was ours once to be of a class whose enunciative powers were disciplined by repeated goings 'through' of the 'Old English Reader,' and well do we remember how the accidental omission of the full pause after 'shows' in the quotation ending the piece entitled 'Excellency of the Holy Scriptures,' caused a certain teacher to understand(!) and direct us to read the whole sentence thus: 'Compared, indeed, with this, all other moral and theological wisdom
Now, it is true, the whole sentence, in its best state, would have shown to our green understandings like enough to 'folly,' if we had once made the effort to find meaning of any sort in it; nor can it be considered the most profitable use of school time, thus to 'like folly show' to unknit juvenile brains the abstract and high thought of mature and great minds, who uttered them with no foolishness or frivolity in their intentions! We see reasons to expect substantial advantages from Mr. Willson's books; and we believe teachers will appreciate and use them. We could wish they had not gone so far to mechanicalize the pupil's enunciation; by too freely introducing throughout the points of inflection; but it is safe to predict that most pupils will take up with interest the simplified readings in science; that they will comprehend and remember a useful portion of what they read; that the lessons will afford both them and the teachers points of suggestion from which the mind can profitably be led out to other knowledge and its connections; and that they who go through the series can at least leave school with some more distinct ideas as to what the fields of human knowledge are, and what they embrace, than was ever possible under the régime of merely fine writing, of pathetic, poetic, and generally miscellaneous selections.
The educational interest that grew up in our country between the years 1810 and 1828, about the year 1835 gave place to a stagnation that has marked nearly the whole of the period intervening between the last-named and the present date. In the year 1858, the New-York Teacher was made the first medium of some thoughts in substance agreeing with those set forth in the earlier part of this paper, claiming the indispensableness to true education of a more true and liberal work on the part of the learner's intellectual faculties, and of a more true and logical consecution than has yet been attained, and one corresponding to the natural order of the intellectual operations, in the books and lessons through which the usual school studies are to be mastered. 'Make'—said the first of the articles setting forth this thought—'the [form of the] facts and principles of any branch of study as simple as you choose, and unless the order of their presentation be natural—be that order, from observation to laws and causes, in which the mind naturally moves, whenever it moves surely and successfully—the child, except in the rare case of prodigies that find a pleasure in unraveling complexity, will still turn from the book with loathing. He will do so because he must. It is not in his nature to violate his nature for the sake of acquiring knowledge, however great the incentives or threatenings attending the process.' 'The child's mind ... with reference to all unacquired knowledge ... stands in precisely the attitude of the experimenters and discoverers of riper years. It is to come to results not only previously unknown, but not even conceived of. Because their nature and faculties are identical, the law of their intellectual action must be the same.' 'Study is research.' In subsequent articles, it was claimed that the law here indicated is for intellectual education, the one true and comprehensive law; and it was expressed more fully in the words: 'All true study is investigation; all true learning is discovery.'
We say, now, that when the first of these articles appeared, the leading thought it contained, namely, that our pupils can and should learn by a process of re-discovery, in the subjects they pursue, had not in distinct nor in substantial statement in any way appeared in the educational treatises or journals; and further, that it was not, so far as their uttered or published expressions show, previously occupying the attention of teachers or of educational writers, nor was it the subject or substance of remarks, speeches, or debates, in the meetings of Teachers' Associations. We say further, and because history and justice require it, that in our country, especially in the educational movements in the State of New-York, and in the several national associations of educators, a marked change and revolution in the course of much of the thought and discussion touching matters of education has, since the year 1858, become apparent, and that to the most casual participant or observer, and in the precise direction in which the thought above referred to points. The essential issue itself—the practicability and desirableness of casting our studies into the form of courses of re-discovery is somewhat distantly and delicately approached, incorporated into speeches by an allusion or in the way of apercû, or thrown out as a suggestion of a partial or auxiliary method with the younger learners, all which is of a fashion highly patronizing to the thought, spite of the scruples about confessing who was the suggester of it. But other questions, which spring up in the train of this, which by themselves had received attention long since, but had been mainly dropped and unheard of among us during the past twenty-five years, have come again into full and unconcealed prominence. Such are the questions about the natural order of appearance of the faculties in childhood, as to what are the elementary faculties of the mind, as to the adaptation of the kinds and order of studies to these, etc. And thus, all at once, is disclosed that Education itself, which many had thought quite a 'finished' thing, well and happily disposed of, or at least so far perfected as to leave no work further save upon the veriest outskirts of details, is in truth a giant superstructure with foundations in sand, or so almost visibly lacking underneath it, that it threatens to fall. For, in the name of the simplest of all common sense, how are we to educate to the best, not yet knowing—and that is now acknowledged—what are the FACULTIES of the very minds we are dealing with, nor what are the PROCESSES by which those minds begin and keep up their advance in knowledge? So, also, those who in the most charitable mood could see in education only something too hum-drum and narrow for their better fancies, find it now rising and expanding into a new and large field for intellectual effort, full of interesting problems, and fraught with realizations as yet undreamed of.
It may be said, that the young mind had always learned what it did learn, by discoveries; we answer, our methods and our books have not in any sufficient degree recognized the fact, provided for it, nor taken advantage of it. It may be said, that writers had previously acknowledged that the mind learns well—some of them even, that it learns best—when it discovers: we answer, that nevertheless, no one had recorded it as a well-grounded, universal conclusion and positive law, that the mind only can learn, in all strictly scientific matters, as it discovers, and that hence, the canons of the method of discovery become rules for directing, in studies of this character, the education of the young. Aristotle and Bacon have recognized and enforced upon the adult mind its two master methods of advance by reasoning. But our children have their knowing also to attain to, their discoveries to make, their logic of proof, on occasions, to employ. Shall we lavish all the treasures of method on those who have passed the formative stage of mind, and acquired the bent of its activities? Rather, we think, the true intellectual method—combining both Baconian induction and Aristotelian deduction—yet waits to realize some of the best of the application and work for which its joint originators and their co-workers have been preparing it; and that perhaps one of the highest consummations of this one method of thought may yet appear in the carrying forward, with more of certainty, pleasure, and success in their attaining of knowledge, the lisping philosophers of our school-rooms and our firesides.
From one source, disconnected latterly from those to which I have thus far called attention, there has arisen a decidedly progressive movement in the direction of right teaching, and one that, at least in geographical studies, promises soon to result in a consummation of great importance. Though Pestalozzianism, as further developed by the Prussian educators and schools, has never yet realized the completely inductive and consecutive character here contended for, it has been tending in a degree toward such a result; and this is perhaps seen in the most marked way in the method of teaching geography developed by Humboldt and Ritter, and represented in this country by their distinguished pupil, Professor Guyot. This method subordinates political to physical geography, proceeding from facts to laws, and by setting out with the grand natural features of the globe, leads the learner to comprehend not only the existence, boundaries, capitals, and strength of nations, but the reasons why these have come to be what they are. As tending in the same true direction, we should not fail to mention also the faithfully-executed series of raised or embossed maps of the late Mr. Schroeter, presenting not only the profile but the comparative elevations of the land-surfaces or continents and islands, and, in detail, of the several political divisions of the globe, thus at once making the ocular study of geography real, and not as formerly, leaving the right conception of the land-surfaces to the pupil's unaided imagination.
Among the decisive and important steps marking the revival of educational interest among us, is that looking to the introduction into our primary schools of the simple lessons for what is called the 'education of the senses,' and what is in fact the solicitation of the perceptive faculties, and the storing of them, with their proper ideas, through the avenues of sense. When employed about observing or finding and naming the parts or qualities and uses of objects, as glass, leather, milk, wood, a tree, the human body, etc., this sort of teaching takes the name of 'Object Lessons;' when it rises to philosophizing in the more obvious and easy stages about natural phenomena, as rain, snow, etc., or about parts of the system of nature, as oceans, mountains, stars, etc., it is sometimes termed 'Lessons in Common Things.' In the year 1860, Mr. E.A. Sheldon, the enterprising superintendent of the schools of that city, first introduced with some degree of completeness and system, this sort of teaching into the primary schools of Oswego. In March, 1861, under the leadership also, as we infer, of their superintendent, Mr. William H. Wells, the Educational Board of the city of Chicago adopted a still more minutely systematized and more extensive course of instruction of this sort, arranged in ten successive grades, and intended to advance from the simple study of objects, forms, colors, etc., gradually to the prosecution of the regular and higher studies. The greater naturalness, life-likeness, and interest of this kind of mental occupation for young learners, over the old plan of restricting them mainly to the bare alphabet, with barren spelling, reading, definitions, and so on, is at once obvious in principle and confirmed by the facts; and for the younger classes—a stage of the utmost delicacy and importance to the future habits of the learner—the fruits must appear in increased readiness of thought and fullness of ideas, and in a preparation for more true and enlarged subsequent comprehension of the proper branches of study; provided, we must add, that these also, when reached, be taught by a method best suited to their subject-matter and to the higher range of mental activity required to deal with it. Whether, now, the object-lesson system and plan is the one competent to carry on the learner through those later studies, is another and larger question, and one to which we shall presently recur.
Under the recall of the minds of educators among us to fundamental principles of methods and tendencies in teaching, which we have pointed out, it was but natural to expect attempts to be made toward remedying the defects and supplying the needs that could not fail to be detected in our teaching processes. Naturally, too, such attempts would result in the bringing forward, sooner or later, of novelties in the topics and form of the school-books. What the pen—which, in the outset, proposed the necessity of molding the school-work into a course of re-discoveries of the scientific truths—should reasonably be expected to do toward supplying the want it had indicated; or what it may, in the interim, have actually accomplished toward furnishing the working implements requisite to realizing in practice the possible results foreshadowed by the best educational theories, it may be neither in place nor needful that we should here intimate. Sometimes, indeed, there is in our social movements evidence of a singular sort of intellectual catalysis; and a mute fact, so it be a fact, and even under enforced continuance of muteness, through influence of temporary and extraneous circumstances, may yet, like the innocent platinum in a mixture of certain gases, or the equally innocent yeast-plant vegetating in the 'lump' of dough, take effect in a variety of ways, as if by mere presence.
We shall remember how even Virgil had to write:
And the veriest bumpkin knows the force of the adage about one's shaking the tree, for another to gather up the fruit. But Virgil was patient, and did well at the last; though the chronicles do not tell us how many pears ever came to the teeth of him that did the tree-shaking. At all events, it is satisfying to know that time spins a long yarn, and comes to the end of it leisurely and at his own wise motion!